


Never Fade Away

by Tierfal



Series: Starlight [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist the Movie: Conqueror of Shamballa, Crossover, Fix-It, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 10:54:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/649780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Kid,” Hughes says softly, “this is the way out.  This is the <i>only</i> way out.”</p>
<p>[MAJOR spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Fade Away

**Author's Note:**

> Today we found out what happens when I end up listening to my DW-associated songs while totally entrenched in FMA. Eltea suggested the basic premise ages ago, but it was throwing Hei in that made the plot bunnies pounce. XD Also, worship [callunavulgari](http://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari), Queen of Crossovers, who's written beautiful things like this so many times that it inspired me to try! ♥
> 
> One more thing:
> 
>  
> 
> _Our hopes and expectations—_   
> _Black holes and revelations_   
> _(Hold you in my arms…_   
> _I just wanted to hold you in my arms)_
> 
> – “[Starlight](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGqFXtgUwzs)” – Muse –

His rocket is flying. His _rocket_ is _flying_ —and it’s taking Ed from him forever. For once, the pain in his chest is from the way his heart breaks at the same time that his whole body fills with elation.

“Whoa, there,” a voice he recognizes says, and he turns—

Rudolf Hess is starting to turn, too, gun still raised, but he isn’t fast enough for—Officer Hughes?

Officer Hughes, wearing a _violet_ shirt—Alfons’s neck twinges with the desire to do a double-take and see if, mad thought, there could be _two_ —but there’s no time, because Officer Hughes is dropping fluidly to the floor and sweeping a bright silver knife across the backs of Hess’s calves.

“Not today, pal,” Hughes says, extending his arm through the rest of the arc; shining droplets of red fly from the tip of the knife—

Blood splatters, and the gun thumps to the ground, and Hess goes down screaming, clutching at his legs—

Alfons is dumb, mute, and paralyzed. Perhaps he might as well be dead. Is that—what was about to—?

“Messy,” Hughes says, twirling the knife and sheathing it smoothly at the back of his belt, “but he’ll live. Hey, kiddo.” He holds out a hand—a bloodied hand—and Alfons presses himself smaller against the control panel, dials and gauges digging at his back. “You’re just going to have to trust me,” Hughes says. “We don’t have a whole lot of time. I mean, we _do_ , but—”

Hess gives a ragged howl; blood pools on the floor; Alfons’s heart beats so hard his shoulders shake.

“Kid,” Hughes says softly, “this is the way out. This is the _only_ way out.”

There’s something in his eyes—his not-quite-familiar eyes—

Alfons has always played by the rules, always played it safe, and he is _losing_. If it wasn’t for the bloody-handed man in front of him, all he’d have to show for his meticulous obedience would be a bullet wound. Maybe it’s time to stop thinking about dying and try to _live_.

He takes Hughes’s slippery hand.

“Good,” Hughes says, grinning, and Alfons has never seen him smile like that. “Now _run_.”

Hess is still wailing, scrabbling as he does for the gun on the floor; over the last of the sputters of rocket exhaust, Alfons hears a commotion approaching—the Thule Society must be looking for him now that the invasion’s underway.

And Ed—

Ed left him. Ed’s gone. _This is the way out_.

Alfons isn’t much of a runner for obvious reasons, but he grips Hughes’s slick fingers, and they take off.

 

 

Just as he thinks his lungs will burst open—which, admittedly, would solve several problems at once—they reach a labyrinth of halls and slow to a walk. Hughes’s hand settles on his shoulder.

“Where are we going?” Alfons asks when he can breathe again.

“Short answer?” Hughes says. “To the ship. Long answer? Space-time isn’t linear.”

Alfons stops, jerks free of his hand, and stares at him.

Hughes grins again, slightly sheepishly this time. It’s another expression that looks practiced despite the fact that Alfons has never seen it on his face before.

“It’s complicated,” Hughes says. “He explains it much better than I do. It was like this for me, too, though—the thing is, you being _gone_ is a fixed point in the universe. You have to be out of here to make room, and that needs to happen within the next…” He pushes his sleeve back to reveal four wristwatches, and Alfons’s heart leaps and stutters all over again, because he’s just realizing that he’s run off into a maze of silent corridors with a _lunatic_ who carries _knives_. “…twenty minutes or so.” Hughes looks up, and his not-quite-right eyes are frighteningly sane. “You have to be out of this universe. The kicker, kid, is that you don’t have to _die_ in order to _leave_.”

Alfons can’t get the word “What?” to leave his throat.

“You were going to die back there,” Hughes says. “But it’s not the dying that’s important. It’s the absence that is. You don’t have to be dead; you just have to be _gone_.”

Alfons wishes his voice was steadier. “I don’t understand.”

“I was dying,” Hughes says, and this is the strangest grin yet. “Only I made the mistake of doing it in a telephone booth.”

Alfons wishes his eyes were not beginning to produce tears of absolute terror. “I _really_ don’t understand.”

A blue door opens from a niche in the wall. A very tall, very skinny man in a strangely-cut brown suit saunters out of it, hands in his pockets, and frowns at Hughes.

“You’re going about it all wrong,” he says.

Hughes rubs at the back of his neck a little. “Jeez, you think this is easy for a time-and-space layman? Guess again.”

The very tall, very skinny man has very strange hair, which does not seem particularly perturbed by the laws of gravity.

“Mister Heiderich,” the man says, “the twentieth century is _no_ time for looking at the stars.”

Alfons swallows. “It’s—not?”

The man shakes his head. “Awful, really. Light pollution, smog everywhere—industry! Industry’s terrible. Industry’s a shame.” He moves back to the blue door, holding it open and gesturing towards… what is that _glowing_ inside? “I think,” he says, “that we should go a _long_ way back.”

Beaming again, Hughes makes a photograph appear from _nowhere_ and shoves it into Alfons’s face. “Look! It’s Orion! Nebulae are my favorite; they’re like itsy-bitsy little children, except for all of the roiling hydrogen and stardust and whatnot—”

Alfons fumbles to grasp the edge of the picture. It’s impossibly clear, impossibly _close_ ; is this really what nebulae—?

He looks up at the man with the wild hair and the slow smile. The man gestures with his head towards whatever’s past that blue door.

“Come on, then,” he says.

Alfons hesitates. The first step is difficult; the second is easier; what _is_ the source of the whirring, and the turquoise light—?

Hughes kisses the tips of his first two non-bloody fingers and presses them to the glass of a photograph framed just inside the door. Through a thick layer of smeared fingerprints, Alfons can just make out the face of a little girl in pigtails.

That’s the last thing he processes clearly before the picture of Orion slips out of his hand and flutters to the grating on the floor.

“This is impossible,” he says, and his voice cracks. “This… is… it’s… spatially inconceivable…”

“That’s a nice break from ‘bigger on the inside’,” the man says, drawing the door shut and leaning against one of the strange, twisting pillars with a grin.

Hughes consults a wristwatch again. “We’re cutting it a little close now, Doctor.”

“Oh, give it a rest,” the Doctor says, slinging his slender body up and starting towards the treasure trove of switches and buttons in the center of the room that cannot be. “You wouldn’t have it any other way.”

He hauls on a prominent lever; and the whole room shudders; and Alfons clings to the nearest railing; and Hughes, the madman, _laughs_.

 

 

Alfons cries the first time he watches a star being born.

And the second.

And the third.

And the twenty-fifth.

 

 

Alfons always liked cats. He is not sure he likes having cats for nurses.

“By the _goddess_ ,” one is saying, looking at the screen (screens are strange and _fascinating_ ; the things they can do, the things they can display—!) that shows a projection (in _real time_ —!) of his lungs. “This is _extremely_ old-fashioned—I’m not even sure how you contracted this, dear; you should really have a word with your supervisor about checking the filtration system in your workplace. If you’d only come in when the symptoms started, we could have had you out the door again before you could say ‘bit of a tickling cough’.”

Alfons’s heart starts to pound a little. “Does that—does that mean that you can’t—?”

“I beg your pardon?” the cat asks. “Oh, good gracious. Of _course_ we can _fix_ it. It’s just going to take, oh… three hours, I think? And a course of antibiotics, I’m afraid.” It is very odd to see a cat smile. “What century do you think you’re _in_?”

Alfons shrugs helplessly, tries not to blush, and looks to the other side of his bright white hospital bed. Hughes grins broadly, and the Doctor winks.

 

 

“I do—wonder, though,” Alfons says. They’ve just averted an interplanetary grudge-match and confiscated some illegal plasma cannons (again), so the Doctor brought them to a Frisn’nian beach for a bit of a holiday. “Is Ed—is he… all right?” He looks over at Hughes, who is sprawled unabashedly out on a towel, wearing swim trunks with a pattern of tiny hearts. “Do you ever visit your daughter? Just to—look. Just to see.”

Hughes closes his eyes, presses his lips together, and shifts them into a smile. “Can’t, kiddo.”

“It’s trickier than you’d think,” the Doctor says from his beach chair. “Planets are simple, time’s simple, but universes… well. Maes was easy—”

“Buy me a drink first, Doctor,” Hughes says.

“Oh, hush. Think of it like a fork in the road, right? Maes’s universe and yours started out the same, but at a given juncture, they split.”

“Two worlds diverged in a wood, and I,” Hughes says, “I took the one less time-traveled by—”

“ _Hush_. You can only redirect yourself into another universe if you move back to the place they parted and very, very carefully follow one path forward after the change.” The Doctor stretches, scratches absently at the back of his head, and sighs. “If it hadn’t been a phone booth, I don’t imagine Maes and I would ever have met. Something about that aligned things; the TARDIS knows where she needs to be. I’m just a passenger, really.”

“You’re not,” Alfons says. He pauses to choose his words. “I gave some thought to what Mister Hughes said that very first day, though. The reason I’m here is because I had to be ‘out’ of my world—out of the immediate vicinity, is what you meant. And if I was making way for someone, it must have been—” The name sits strangely on his tongue. “Alphonse. It must have been Alphonse Elric coming into _my_ universe, and he would only do that if he did it with Ed. Ed’s back there, isn’t he? He’s back in my world again.”

Silence. Which means he’s right.

“And you think you’re not important,” the Doctor says, smiling faintly. “I suppose I can’t expect you to have read the history books from your own future, but you _are_ , Alfons. You’re marvelous.”

Alfons’s pulse is skittering in his ears, but he irons out the tremor in his voice. “Can I see him?”

Hughes is watching the Doctor very intently. Alfons swears he can feel every drop of blood in his body squeezing as his heart beats.

“Only for a moment,” the Doctor says softly. “The energy of parallel lives… you can’t get close. You can’t speak a word to him. He can’t see you. He can’t even know you’re alive; it might… tweak things funny, you never know. Fifteen seconds, maybe less.” He sits up and meets Alfons’s eyes. “Is that enough?”

A lifetime wouldn’t have been.

“That’s enough,” Alfons says.

 

 

_I love you,_ Alfons thinks at the strong shoulders and the curve of the back and the swinging ponytail. _I love you, I love you, I’ve always loved you, I hope you_ know _how loved you are—_

A tall boy with short brown hair careens down the white marble stairs and hooks his arm through Ed’s. Alfons can’t hear what the chattering’s about, but he can just make out Ed’s grin.

“He’s happy,” the Doctor says. “I’m not just saying that; he is.”

“I know,” Alfons says. _It was never me, but that doesn’t change anything. You don’t have any of the things you hoped for, but this is what you needed, isn’t it?_ “That’s all I wanted. I just wanted him to be happy, one way or another.”

“I know the feeling,” the Doctor says.

Hughes’s hand curls around Alfons’s shoulder and presses hard.

The Doctor ruffles his hair gently. “Time to go.”

 

 

Alfons cries the first time he gets knighted by an alien monarch.

And the second.

And the fourth.

He can’t help it. It’s just so _cool_.

 

 

Alfons learns how to fly the TARDIS. In the process, he also learns how to fall on the grating without getting a bruise that looks like it came from a waffle iron. When Hughes hugs him, after they land without a _wobble_ on Fer Kippol’s second moon, he hears the words _“I’m so proud of you”_ for the first time.

Alfons learns how to think critically while hanging upside-down from a Racnoss web. He learns how to write a peace treaty that will last more than fourteen seconds. He learns how to throw knives without hitting arteries.

He learns how to stand up taller when his knees are quaking. He learns how to run for his life and thousands of others’. He learns what to say on the days the Doctor doesn’t win.

He learns, in the end, how to be remembered.

And _that’s_ enough.


End file.
